Roguelikes(and roguelites) have become one of the quintessential genres of gaming in the last decade or so because it’s quite possibly one of the most flexible design frameworks to ever exist. Just about any kind of game can become more exciting and engaging when you add permadeath and gradual meta-progression, among other mechanics.
I used to be terrified of dumb flash games where death was a constant, and now I’m always champing at the bit for my next roguelike hit. That’s how well it all works.
10 Best Roguelikes With Minimal Combat
No need for combat for some roguelike action.
At this point, it’s a little difficult to discern what a “vanilla” roguelike even is anymore, because roguelike genre hybrids have become much more prevalent. Roguelike fever has snaked its way into every conceivable facet of game design, and it’s resulted in some truly excellent games.
If you’re looking for a roguelike game that does more than just drop you in a dungeon and leave you for dead, these are the games you’ll enjoy most.
For the purposes of this list, a “roguelike genre hybrid” is any game that either takes the established concept of a roguelike dungeon crawler in a novel direction, or otherwise incorporates the common trappings of roguelikes into other genres.
10Don’t Starve Together
Sudden, Violet Death Is Not Covered By Farm Insurance
Don’t Starve Together
Most base-building or farming games don’t utilize permadeath. The entire point of building a base or farm is that you’re going to use it long-term, after all, so if the whole thing evaporates the moment you drop dead, it feels kind of pointless.
That might seem like a reason not to playDon’t Starve Together, but consider it a life lesson about taking responsibility for the things you own.
You start Don’t Starve Together with literally nothing but the clothes on your back, which means accumulating resources and building sustainable systems is an incredibly long, arduous process, arguably even more than something like Minecraft.
It’s because it’s such a long process, though, that you have a better impetus for keeping yourself safe, because if you’re killed or starve to death, it all goes bye-bye.
The central mission statement of Don’t Starve is, of course, “don’t starve.” It’s a roguelike, but not one you can brute force your way through. You only get one shot at this, and if I’m going to be risking my life to create a halfway decent living space, you can bet I’m going to spend time drawing up blueprints and storing food first.
9BPM: Bullets Per Minute
The Gods Demand Sick Riffs
BPM: Bullets Per Minute
Roguelike dungeon-crawlers share an unexpectedlylarge amount of DNA with boomer shooters. It’s you versus a bunch of punks in cramped, isolated confines with nothing but your own trigger finger to rely on. A boomer shooter roguelike would be a novel hybrid in itself, but BPM: Bullets Per Minute adds the additional layer of being rhythm-based.
BPM’s base gameplay layer is not dissimilar to something like Enter the Gungeon; you enter a room, enemies spawn in, you shoot ‘em til they stop moving. The difference is that nearly every element of this combat needs to happen to the beat of the sick metal backing track.
You have to fire on the beat, reload on the beat, dodge on the beat, and more if you want to deal the most possible damage and take the least possible damage.
For me, playing roguelike games is often about getting into a flow state where you know exactly where you need to go, where to aim, and what to do next. If you’re going to be in that flow state anyway, it might as well all happen to the beat. You’d be surprised how similar the feeling is, especially if you put on some decent headphones.
8Darkest Dungeon
Personnel Management Is Murder
Darkest Dungeon
Speaking as someone who used to work in a call center, I know what it’s like to be a disposable employee. It’s grueling, demoralizing, and generally unpleasant, and you’re gradually more likely to wake up to a feeling of abject despair every morning.
In this way, I share kinship with the heroes ofDarkest Dungeon, who also know a thing or two about walking into an unfathomable maw of terror.
Unlike in many roguelike games, in Darkest Dungeon, you, the player, are not the one in danger. Rather, it’s the unwitting heroes you’ve recruited into exploring the dark reaches surrounding your hamlet. It’s hostile, dangerous territory for even the most seasoned adventurer, and there’s a strong possibility one of your troops is going to drop dead before you’re done.
10 Roguelike Hidden Gems You Need To Play
Roguelikes are a pretty elusive genre, being held up almost entirely by obscure indies, but some of these less-loved games are awesome.
As the game makes clear upfront, it’s all about making the best of an objectively bad situation.Your heroeswilldie, or otherwise be rendered useless by insanity or dangerous personality traits.
It’s on you to make back-ups, back-up back-ups, and more back-ups than that as you feed soldiers into the proverbial, or sometimes literal, meat grinder, and hope the resources you accumulate will make the next attempt easier.
7Dicey Dungeons
Time To Roll Them Bones
Dicey Dungeons
Probability has gone hand-in-hand with roguelikes since the genre’s inception. It’s that element of randomness that keeps you on your toes and sharpens your skills, that ensures you’re never more than one miscalculation from death.
Ifprobability is going to be a central mechanic, you might as well build your entire game around that classic arbiter of chance, the die.
InDicey Dungeons, you live and die by the dice. It’s technically a deckbuilding game, but rather than a literal deck of cards, you need to carefully select the weapons and items you use, as well as know when to slot which dice where in combat.
You could find the strongest weapon ever, but if its usage requirements are too stringent, like only rolling 6s, you’ll be statistically unlikely to be able to use it when you need it.
Dicey Dungeons plays to the very heart of gambling, that being risk management. I consider myself a cautious gambler, so I always opt for a spread of weapons and items that I can reliably use on any roll. It’s a game that’s good for finding out what kind of gambler you are and showing you your system’s strengths and weaknesses.
6Cult Of The Lamb
A Cult Leader’s Gotta Do All The Work
Cult of the Lamb
In roguelikes with meta-progression, you typically accumulate resources throughout your runs, which you can then spend on upgrades, weapons, adding stuff to the random pool, and so on.Cult of the Lambis similar in that regard, but rather than straight upgrade resources, and materials you harvest are instead invested into your burgeoning cult commune.
Assuming you don’t get yourself killed while on a crusade, you get to keep most of the assorted junk you find, including money, food, and materials.
You need all of this in order to build new constructs, purchase upgrades, andmake dinner for your followers, all in the interest of keeping them happy. Happy cultists create faith, and more faith gives you new constructs and combat abilities.
I already enjoyed the combat element of dungeon-crawling roguelikes, but I’m not usually much for base-building, so I wasn’t sure about Cult of the Lamb before I played it.
However, the feedback loop of dungeon-crawling to base-building and back is both seamless and satisfying, with just about any task undertaken for a good reason. Except from making your followers eat poop, that’s mostly for laughs.
Yeah, You Knew It’d Be Here
Poker is one of the most well-known games of skill and chance in the world, dating as far back as the late 18th century. It’s a game that incorporates strategy and probability manipulation in equal measures, something it shares in common with the roguelike genre as a whole.
In hindsight, it’s not particularly surprising that the concepts went together like cheese and crackers in the form of Balatro.
You don’t really need me to explain why you need to play Balatro, as statistically speaking,you’ve probably already played it. It’s such a devilishly simple concept, it’s kind of miraculous that nobody else had tried it before.
What Other Roguelike Indie Games Would You Recommend To Someone Who Loves Balatro?
Balatro took the gaming world by storm in 2024 and proved to be one of the best games of the year. It quickly became a favorite among many indie gamers and fans of unique game creation. What other unique roguelike games would you recommend to people who love Balatro but may otherwise be newbies to the roguelike video game genre?
Making Poker hands is already about taking measured risks, so you just add some nifty controlled chaos in the form of Jokers, and you have a game that is both conceptually basic and theoretically infinite.
Admittedly, Balatro might seem simple to me because I learned to play Poker when I was 12. I have seen some players who don’t already know how to play cards struggle with it, but that’s another nice thing about Balatro: it serves as a pretty straightforward tutorial for Poker in general.
4Hand Of Fate
Hand of Fate
Here’s a fun fact: the original Dungeons & Dragons manual released in 1974, while Rogue, the game that inspired the roguelike genre, released six years later in 1980. It could be said, then, that tabletop games were doing permadeath dungeon crawling before it was cool.
Of course, a good DM doesn’t build a game just to kill players, but I guess Hand of Fate’s Dealer isn’t a particularly good DM.
What differentiates Hand of Fate from other deckbuilding roguelikes is that you’re not the only one with a deck of cards. The Dealer has his own deck, full of tricks, traps, monsters, and events, which form the path your adventure follows. You have a degree of control thanks to the cards you bring to the table, but throwing the Dealer’s cards in the mix keeps you from getting an overt upper hand.
I have a bit of tabletop experience, so I know when a DM is going out of his way to trip me up. Hand of Fate becomes more fun when you play it like you’re deliberately trying to counter and hinder someone who’s trying to do the same to you, and chuckling when his gambits fall short.
3Mullet MadJack
10 Seconds Or Your Death Is Free
Mullet Madjack
Roguelike games have always had an in with the speedrunning community. It’s already pretty impressive to survive waves of potential instant death, but it’s even more impressive to do it in record time. If you’re already a fan of blazing through randomly-generated dungeons as fast as possible, you’re in the perfect headspace to play Mullet MadJack.
The central gimmick of Mullet MadJack is that you only have 10 seconds in real time before you instantly drop dead. You refill the timer by killing enemies quickly and impressively, which requires you to move as fast and efficiently as possible. You have tokeep moving, keep shooting, and never ever stop.
The lore reason for all this is that your brain needs a constant influx of dopamine from a connected chat cam, which spikes whenever you kill stuff. A little on the nose, perhaps, but I’d be lying if I said rushing through crowds of dudes and drop-kicking them into exposed electrical panels wasn’t invigorating.
2Vampire Survivors
Let Them Come To You
Vampire Survivors
In a traditional roguelike dungeon crawler, you explore a dungeon at your own pace, encountering enemies within separate, instanced rooms. This does require a decent amount of random asset generation, which can be tricky to build well.
That’s part of the genius behindVampire Survivors; you don’t need to make multiple kinds of room when all the enemies are already in the room with you.
Vampire Survivors spawned a sort of subset of the roguelike genre colloquially known as “bullet heaven.” The monsters converge on you, and you gradually accumulate strength and weapons to stave them off.
You’re the center of the action here; it’s technically possible for your weapons to get strong enough that you can just stand stock still and let foes march to their death, at least for a little while.
There’s a kind of tangible power you get from Vampire Survivors that you don’t get from most other roguelikes. you’re able to get powerful enough to bulldoze punks in Binding of Isaac, for instance, but it’s only in Vampire Survivors that I’ve ever felt so firmly in command of a situation (at least until I suddenly don’t).
The Quintessential Rogue-Vania
Dead Cells
Metroidvania games can feel somewhat antithetical roguelikes, at least in terms of game layout. A vania’s map is usually very deliberately designed and strategically peppered with items and powerups, compared to a roguelike dungeon’s random layout.
With a little imagination, though, two seemingly disparate genres can work together, as they did inDead Cells.
Dead Cells opts for a randomized vania-like platformer approach, kind of like if a traditional dungeon were turned on its side. In the same way as something top-down, you can’t just run to the right and expect to get to an exit; you need to explore, try different routes, and uncover items to aid with progression.
What I like about Dead Cells is that it still has a kernel of that traditional vania progression, as uncovering certain powerups opens new paths of traversal like teleporting stones.
You still have to fight through random monsters and upgrade your skills and weapons, but it’s also important to mind the map layout, random as it is. It’s a game that appeals to two of my favorite niches in a surprisingly harmonious manner.
